CLEVELAND – Once again, Vice President Cheney showed his boss how to debate – same as 2000, when he helped turn around momentum in the campaign.
Cheney looked calm and almost grandfatherly as he used his debate with veep wannabe John Edwards to take aim at top-of-the-ticket John Kerry and paint him as a flip-flopper who lacks the credibility to lead and win in a time of terror.
“You’re not credible on Iraq because of the enormous inconsistencies that John Kerry and you have cited time after time after time,” Cheney said.
“Whatever the political pressures of the moment requires, that’s where you’re at. But you’ve not been consistent and there’s no indication at all that John Kerry has the conviction to successfully carry through on the war on terror.”
There in a nutshell is the Bush-Cheney case against Kerry – but it’s a case that Bush barely made in last week’s first presidential debate. In an era when safety is the first concern for many voters, that was a key point.
It was Cheney who had all the best one-liners while Edwards sat there often looking slightly irked as he got zinged for failing to show up for Senate votes and was accused of knuckling under to Howard Dean’s anti-war stance on Iraq.
In a sense it was a repeat of 2004 when Cheney bested Democrat Joe Lieberman in the veep debate – and helped Bush come back after he lost his first debate to Al Gore.
Last week, Bush forgot to even mention Kerry’s long and liberal Senate record – which includes votes against the 1991 Gulf War – but Cheney made sure to do so, saying that “tough talk” during a debate can’t cover over Kerry’s 30-year record.
Any hope by Team Kerry to build on momentum from the first presidential debate was stopped short by Cheney’s solid answers. Now the question is whether Bush learns from Cheney for his next debate against Kerry on Friday.